Add Homonym Attacks! #40
Ad Hominem: Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason.
Ad Hominem Attack: An argument that focuses on a personal attack as opposed to the subject in question.
Add Homonym Attacks!: The process by which one inserts a homophone and it bites you.
(It also serves as the title to Inside Pulse Beyond the Threshold’s representative column in the world of Critical Thinking, Science and Skepticism.)
Intro
Since we’re in that odd bit of time between Valentines and Presidents, I feel that it is appropriate to take this opportunity to explore a topic which has a lot to do with both holidays.
What topic might that be? What topic properly bridges the gap between chalky candy hearts and Lincoln’s log cabin?
The answer is so obvious!
Goat-suckers!
Las Chupacabras: un cuento de vageudad y sangre
Se puede buscar disparate dondequiera, y la mayor parte del tiempo se va a encontrarlo. Entonces …
Oh sorry.
English.
What the f*ck is a chupacabra? Well, a while back in Puerto Rico some folks found some dead goats. Much of the blood was missing from the goats. In a highly logical series of thoughts, it was concluded by many that there must be a heretofore unknown creature that sucks the blood out of goats. Chupar is Spanish, and means to suck. Cabra is their word for goat.
Hence the legend of the suck-goat was born.
The chupacabra or goat-sucker is unique among highly unlikely crypto-zoological beings. (And by the way, the word is pronounced ZOH-ology and not ZOO- ology. It is an all too common mispronunciation and it must be stopped.)
I’ve been sidetracked again. Shit we’re not off to a good start here.
What makes the chupacabra unique is that there really doesn’t exist a consensus amongst the nuts about any of the creatures details. We have an idea of what a Sasquatch might look like or is supposed to look like. We imagine Nessie and Champ and their kind to look like Pleisiosaurs.
But what the f*ck does a chupacabra look like?
Sadly, the Chupacabra homepage is now gone. But we don’t let such things get us down. When things like that happen, we turn to Cecil and his crew at the Straight Dope.
Descriptions of the creature vary wildly. The Chupacabra Home Page says, “Speculation has placed the chupacabra as a resident of another galaxy or a half-man, half-beast vampire who roams the countryside terrorizing farm animals. Others say that the chupacabra hops like a kangaroo and leaves a sulfur-like stench. Still others say that the chupacabra is a panther-like creature with red eyes and a long snake-like tongue.” The Skeptic’s Dictionary adds, “Some have seen a small half-alien, half-dinosaur tailless vampire with quills running down its back . Some think it may be a type of dinosaur heretofore unknown.
Their entry on the chupacabra can be found here, and the Skeptic Dictionary entry mentioned can be found here. There are many good links that branch off of those as well. If you have questions like, “where did the blood go, if not down the gullet of a dinosaur alien?” these resources should be able to help you find out those answers, too.
Here is where it gets interesting for me. You see, people have blamed chupacabras for thousands of animal mutilations. (According to UFO magazine via SkeDic, 2000 cases in Puerto Rico alone by the year 1996.) Don’t you think there is at least a 1 percent chance of somebody being able to take a picture or shoot a video of one of these things? Nowadays, in their cellphones, everybody I know has a camera on them at all times. Many people I know carry a camera-phone and a proper digital camera at all times. Are you telling me nobody in Puerto Rico has this technology? Some people have claimed evidence of these things in Miami. Nobody has a camera in Miami?
But therein lies the shelf-life of this myth. Number of sightings of this thing can increase exponentially by its lack of a discrete physical description. If you spot a catamount in the distance, and see some dead animals around, you might think it to be a goat-sucker. If you see a monkey with a knife running away from the goat he just stabbed, you might think that you just spotted the chupacabra.
And if you see that alien mutilating cattle, partner, you’ve got yourself a suck-goat.
Outro
I’m really enjoying Beyond the Threshold of late, despite the fact that I am the last Culture Sectioner standing. I thought Lucard was going to back me up, that lousy lord of the undead.
Anyways, in order to mitigate chupacabra sightings I believe that we should have a DESIGN YOUR OWN GOAT-SUCKER contest. I don’t know if there should be a prize involved, but I definitely want to pin this protean pissant down.
And if we get a good black and white picture, we can have a Chupacabra Coloring Contest for the kids.
